I usually stay clear of search engine optimization (SEO) discussions, but I think this video is worth your time. In the video, Corey Eulas teaches SEO tips, tricks, and best practices found to increase traffic from search engines. This talk includes examples with a look “under the hood” of a few actual sites owned by members of the audience. You will "discover how to enhance user experience and usability while making your site more search engine friendly".
Rita McGrath at Harvard Business Review has written a blog post on why she hates micropayments. Micropayments are financial transactions involving very small sums of money (see Wikipedia). For online publishing, a small fee would allow you to view the content for a certain period of time or for a certain number of articles.
Personally, I'm not sold on the concept of micropayments for content which is probably why I was lured to Ms. McGrath's article in the first place.
The idea has been around a long time — at least since the mid-to-late 90s — with both supporters and detractors weighing in. Millions have been lost by companies seeking to capitalize on streams of micropayments, almost all of which eventually crashed and burned. Myself, when confronted with a request to chip in 99 cents for a one-time glimpse at an article or $2.99 for a week's worth (as some of my local newspapers are doing) — well, I close that window and go away.
The author of the article discusses further the importance for any payment system adopted to consider "how the payment link of customers' consumption chains fits into their total experience". Micropayment systems have a tall order in that they need to be seamless, transparent, and achieve inevitability. Even grimmer for publishers, it's not only the micropayment experience that needs to be improved but also the non-micropayment systems too.
For the past few years, I've paid a yearly subscription to the Wall Street Journal for the print publication and the online subscription. With my yearly renewal coming up very soon, I've decided to discontinue my online subscription to the WSJ. Why would I do that? There are some very basic reasons to why I'm dropping WSJ.com. I rarely find myself reading the online content of the WSJ. I either already read the stories in the print version of the WSJ or I have found myself already familiar with the news story because I read a similar story posted elsewhere online. Stopping by the WSJ.com, unlike CNN or FoxNews, never became a daily ritual for me.
As most site owners do, I rely on content to sell my site on the Internet. I fully recognize the emerging trends of social or community sites such as FaceBook and Twitter attracting large audiences on the Internet. While I have been dabbling with how I can benefit by merging content and social media into a website, CMS Report remains mainly as a content site. If suddenly people lost interest in using the Internet to retrieve content then sites like mine would no longer have a reason to exist.
Yesterday afternoon Google announced at their Webmaster Central Blog that Google is changing the architecture of its search engine. These changes are expected to improve the speed, accuracy, and completeness of the Google search engine. Better yet, the prototype for the enhanced search engine is available for public testing.
For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google's web search. It's the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits "under the hood" of Google's search engine, which means that most users won't notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we're opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.
Some parts of this system aren't completely finished yet, so we'd welcome feedback on any issues you see. We invite you to visit the web developer preview of Google's new infrastructure at [link broken] and try searches there.
When first using Microsoft's new Bing search engine one of the surprises for me was the speed in which the results were delivered. I suspect that it's probably no coincidence that as competition heats up Google now sees a need to improve the infrastructure for delivering search results to its users. Whatever the reason, I'm happy to see that changes are coming.
I also have to admit that I get a secret pleasure in knowing that changes with Google's search engine will put those search engine optimization (SEO) folks on even shakier ground. These are the folks that claim for a price they can put your website pages on top of Google's index pages. As you can tell from my tone, I'm not a big believer in SEO. I'm a big believer that writing good content on your site is the only search engine optimization you ever really need. Hopefully Google's new search engine will continue to prove my point.
I've never agreed and disagreed so much with one article as this one from The Sydney Morning Herald, Drive your own website.
I agree...
I hate being held to ransom. And I'm sure you do, too. But that's the scenario you're creating when you hand over your website to a web designer or developer and relinquish control over when and how you can change your content...
...That's why I think it's vital for small-business owners to use their own content management systems (CMS). My recommendation is to initially use a designer to create the overall look but after that you at least want to be able to change the text on your website whenever you want.
I disagree...
If you are planning to use a free CMS, such as Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla, expect a steep learning curve and a lot of time poring through forums and blogs trying to figure out how to insert that picture just the way you want.
On the other hand, monthly subscription-based models can offer more flexibility. While you might baulk at being tied to a monthly subscription, the benefit is this is usually accompanied by technical support - so you can call or email for help
The fact of the matter is whether you're going to be using a CMS that is propriety, open source, or subscription based...there is always a learning curve involved. The advice I often give to those looking for a CMS is to look at which CMS meet the requirements then worry about the licensing along with the how/where the site will be hosted. The fact is that if the CMS doesn't meet your requirements...no subscription-based model for that CMS is going to meet your needs. Also, if you think Wordpress has a steep learning curve...you likely haven't done your homework on Web content management systems. Just my opinion...
"An objective without strategy, or a strategy without execution remains a dream."
- Dries Buytaert, Drupal, Acquia, and Mollom, "Contributing back to Drupal", Buytaert.net.
Nice reminder from The Content Wrangler on where the money:
Are you looking to drum up some new business? Want to get more dollars from existing clients? Are you a starving writer?
White paper expert Michael A. Stelzner, author of Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged, provides the following reasons white papers could dramatically increase your writing revenue...
Over the past couple years, I've been asked by a few if I would be willing to write a white paper recommending a content management system. information system, or specific product. For the most part, those opportunities always seem to arrive when I'm busy with other projects so I declined. When I wasn't busy, I was asked to write positively about a product I knew nothing about (I declined) as well as a specific information system which I believed could be better written within the company (the potential client had smarter people than me and they agreed).
Gadgetopia pointed their readers to a website hosted by Michigan State University with a number of screen captures for how the Internet looked like in 1996. Almost a year ago, I posted a screen capture of the first site I did in that era. I'm somewhat pleased that the appearance of my site was no worse than the sites of well known companies. The author of the Internet '96 article brings up the point that you have to consider the technology back then to why sites looked the way they did.
The November 1st issue of the Wall Street Journal has an interesting article regarding Netlog.com (formerly Facebox). The article is titled, "How Netlog Leaps Language Barriers".
The article focuses on the diversity challenges that social networking sites have in Europe with Europeans speaking more than a dozen languages. Netlog appears to have stepped up to the cultural diversity challenge and is doing so at a much lower investment cost than its rivals. Netlog's secret weapons: the use of open source tools (apparently the site runs on PHP, MySQL, Ajax, etc.) as well as an army of foreign students at a nearby Belgian university.
By relying on some clever technology and a ready supply of foreign students at a nearby university, Netlog has become a veritable Tower of Babel. It counts 28 million members and has versions in 13 different languages, including French, German and Italian, as well less common tongues like Romanian and Norwegian. Polish and Russian versions are nearly finished and another dozen languages, including Catalan, Estonian and Arabic, are on the way.
That is a notable achievement, because outside of North America, many Internet start-ups are hemmed in by linguistic barriers that limit their ability to attract users and generate revenue.
I applaud Netlog's forward-thinking to build from the ground-up a multi-language content/social management system. More interesting is that while Netlog's developers understood what was at stake, the much larger U.S. social networking sites have been hampered by not thinking on more global terms.
Last weekend, both Linux Today and Linux.com provided links and excerpts to an article I posted here at CMS Report. You can see some of the stats on my newly quantified site at quantcast.com.